Saving a precious grove, forestry technician Scott
Bullene sets flames among California's giant se
quoias, which need fire to open cones and clear
space for seedlings. "These trees used to have fire
every 10 to 20 years," says researcher Steve Sackett
(opposite), checking a heat sensor. "Last time they
burned naturally was before the turn of the century."
To solve smoke conflicts, people who use
fire take various approaches. In some cases
they work to get special permits from local air
quality districts. In the Los Angeles Basin, fire
managers may soon be able to buy pollution
credits from local industry, which allow them
to emit specified levels of air pollution.
Another problem is familiar to all: money.
Most forest managers say it's easier to get the
bucks to fight a fire than to start one. But fight
ing fire, though nominally included in agency
budgets, is also financed through a national
system of emergency appropriations that
essentially gives fire-fighting agencies a blank
check. When land managers are organizing
prescribed burns, they face lean budgets and
critical scrutiny, but when a wildfire starts,
the stops are pulled out. You need a helicopter?
You got a helicopter!
"Because we don't have a budget," a fire
officer told me, "we can afford to spend a mil
lion dollars to save a $50,000 cabin."
But it's far more difficult to get $50,000 for
a prescribed burn that might prevent that
million-dollar fire. And even if some money
dribbles through the system, one or two care
fully designed prescribed burns seldom come
close to matching the way fire used to work.
"Historically what happened was that you
had lots and lots of little burns," said Stephen
Pyne. "Now you have to get permits, you have
to organize a burn, you have to fund it. It's too
cumbersome to get the timing right. The acres
just don't get burned."
ONLY
ONCE did I see fire working the
way it may have in centuries past. It
was autumn in Yosemite National
Park. The fire was part of the park's policy of
allowing certain fires to keep burning if weath
er and fuel conditions seemed favorable.
Lightning had started the fire on the 16th of
July, and it was now mid-November. In four
months the fire had burned about 600 acres.
I hiked to the fire with a fire ecologist and
two technicians. When we got there, the
flames were about ten inches tall. They flick
ered in a mat of duff under 300-year-old sugar
pine trees six feet in diameter and glowed
among dead branches on the ground. They left
behind a layer of ash six inches deep.
What was most interesting about this fire
was not just the way it munched along in its
unspectacular manner, but how we reacted.
The Essential Element of Fire